04 FIFA World Cup outscored Sou Africa 00 for TV audience

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2014 FIFA World Cup outscored South Africa 2010 for TV audience --

Wed, 08 Oct 2014 12:04

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According to insidethegames website, the global television audience for this years FIFA World Cup in Brazil looks to have been marginally higher than it was for the 2010 tournament held in South Africa.

Kevin Alavy, managing director for Mediabrands at Futures Sport Entertainment a United States-based sports research consultancy said the global audience for Brazil 2014 was up slightly on South Africa 2010.

FIFA s director of TV Niclas Ericson said, We are optimistic it will be higher than 2010, Ericson said, adding: We had very, very good figures across the Americas and Europe, and we are encouraged by what we saw in Asia.

Given that the average in-home global audience for each live match during the 2010 World Cup was 188.4 million, an increase of 6 percent from 2006, Alavys unofficial assessment suggests that Brazil 2014 may come close to breaking through the 200 million barrier.

According to Alavy, if you look at most sporting events, they tend to lose viewers over time - a phenomenon he attributes to fragmentation as a result of proliferation of both content and devices.

Because of the time difference, an event in the Americas does not generally allow for large audience reach in Asia, and according to insidethegames, Alavy confirmed that having the World Cup in Brazil had a very large negative impact on viewing figures in East Asia.

Host nation Brazil, the second-biggest market - behind China - for audience reach in 2010, stepped into the breach, however: Alavy said it was the number one country by a large margin.

The Brazilian time-zone worked well in Europe, especially in countries, like the UK and Portugal, on the continents western fringes.

In spite of Englands failure to win a single 2014 World Cup game, Alavy said that UK numbers were up compared to 2010, when the average live match audience was 5.3 million and the peak match audience was 17.9 million.

Encouragingly for FIFA, Alavy also pointed to a double-digit increase in the World Cup audience in Russia, the 2018 tournament host.

The US, where audience reach rose 19 per cent from 2006 to 2010, was a further bright spot, as the nation, headed by President Barack Obama, appeared to respond to the backs-to-the-wall heroics of the American team in their successful efforts to qualify from an exceptionally tough group.

FIFA has already disclosed that an audience of 11.1 million watched the US versus Ghana clash on ESPN, with a further 4.8 million viewing Univisi ns Spanish coverage in the US.

With in-home viewer reach in the US put at 94.5 million for the 2010 tournament, it seems likely that this measure will have exceeded 100 million for Brazil 2014.

Source: insidethegames

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